It's the first day of middle school for my daughter. 

In June, a handful of 6th grade girls met in my living room for their first summer prayer group. The practice I had picked out for them was a prayer inviting them to receive God's love through the person who loves them most (I wrote about the practice in an earlier post).

When they closed their eyes, I told them to bring a person who loves them most to mind and consider what special gift that person offers them.  Then after they silently expressed gratitude for that person, I asked them if they could receive that this person is a "face of God."  And the way this person loves them is the very way God was offering them love right that moment!  After a few more moments in silence, they spent some time journaling and then we opened the time for sharing. 

Guess what?  The special gift of the people that came to each of their minds was the same!  
This should offer us some insight.

What was the gift?  How was God wanting to love them?  Through playfulness and humor!

Was this your image of God in middle school?  Is this part of your image of God now?  

Yet it is the very image that God, the Originator of Playfulness and Creator of Humor, wanted to share with them.  It makes sense too, doesn't it?  They (and their parents) will need tons of playfulness and a life-giving sense of humor as they enter and seek to survive middle school!  

And on this morning, God has not disappointed.  The person my daughter brought to mind in June, her little brother, had her giggling with his silliness and the way he accidentally swapped words around when he said, "The mow looks perfectly yarded!" She laughed all the way to the bus stop.  

I could not have asked for a better way to begin her first day of middle school.    
It was the perfect reminder to her nervous parents that the playful, humorous God was near.

• Can you allow God to love you with playfulness and humor today?  
• Is there an area of your life in which you need the playfulness and humor of God?  
• If you find it difficult, you might prayerfully ask to be shown God's humor and playfulness this week.

More than I thought.

In 2009 I had emergency back surgery for a ruptured disc that caused the worst nerve pain I have ever felt...paralyzing lightning down my leg and out my right toes leaving me screaming.
   
After the surgery, I'd hoped the muscle pain and sciatica I had experienced on and off since high school would finally be gone...it wasn't.  I did physical therapy (having already done chiropractic).  Again I was hopeful...it didn't help.  

Whenever the pain would hit, I'd chalk it up to accidentally bending or twisting and tweaking an old basketball injury.  It would have me either in bed or on the floor with my feet up on the couch for days.  I thought my active life of hiking and carrying stuff (like my own little girl) was over.  I (& those around me) started treating my back gingerly, making sure I did not lift or do anything that could trigger that familiar shooting pain.  You can imagine what I looked like whenever I walked and sat down or did anything that included my back (amazing how much does!).    

One night at a breathwork class, after observing me, the instructor told me to read John Sarno's The Mindbody Prescription, saying it would help. I thought this was laughable.  I'd undergone the knife and physical therapy, how could a book help?  Undeterred she told me how it had helped a friend with my kind of pain. At the end of our time she said, "You're so young, I just don't want you to be in pain the rest of your life."  What did I have to lose?  I read it.  
I haven't been on the floor or in bed due to back pain since.  Seriously.  That was 8 years ago!

Over the past eight years, beginning with that book, I've learned three things: 

My physical self is interconnected with all other parts of myself. How I am spiritually affects how I am emotionally which affects how I am physically and all can affect how I am relationally.  What's happening relationally can affect how I am mentally and emotionally and physically and so on.  If we choose to dissect and isolate any of these when we have dis-ease or pain in any given area, we miss ways of healing that come when we consider the whole of us.   

A lifetime of being a "good girl" coupled with perfectionism affected my body.  It led to the suppression of anger and other unwanted feelings which finally erupted in physical pain.  My unconscious thought physical pain a better choice than emotional pain.  Locating an old area of injury and a socially acceptable place of pain (back pain is what ulcers used to be!), that's what it chose.  It's interesting the games our minds can play (thinking that they're helping us)! 
 
Seeing God as a Divine Task-Master perpetuated my good girl-perfectionist cycle.  Since we become like the God we adore (as I mentioned in last week's post), my inner critics had no problem replicating this God-like perpetual drivenness to accomplish and improve.  Be better.  Try harder.  Be (or at least act) perfect.  And it's no surprise that snippets of Scripture would often run through my mind to back up these "commands"!  Anytime I fell short, which of course I did since I'm human, I took the feelings of anger and shame and stuffed them. Eventually my body would no longer "play these reindeer games" (it began warning me in junior high but it took me a long time before I would or knew how to listen!).    

Now my body is my friend.  I view it as part of the whole.  It tells me the truth.  When I feel nerve pain begin in my toe, I know that if I don't tend to what feelings are running under the surface, it will soon start in my back.  My God-created body has invited me to not only reflect on my God-created emotions but even my image of God.  As my image of God has undergone healing and transformation, guess what?  It's affected my mind, emotions, relationships, and yes, my body.  Thank God for that gift of back pain.